Jack Kingston: “I wanted to talk to the House tonight about the agenda which the Republican Conference is moving. We have worked closely…”

“I wanted to talk to the House tonight about the agenda which the Republican Conference is moving. We have worked closely with the White House and some Members of the Democratic Caucus on the BEST agenda, B-E-S-T. It is kind of easy to remember if we keep it in mind. B: Building up the military. One of the big problems we have is we are still in a dangerous world, and although the Soviet Union has fallen, we can still see, if we have watched Russia and Chechnya, that Russia really has not changed. Their political system has, but their philosophy of being an aggressive nation certainly has not. And they have a lot of military nuclear weapons over there. The question is what are they doing with that nuclear arsenal? One of the things is they are selling it to renegade countries. We need to keep an eye on them. Madam Speaker, we cannot disengage from the world military scene. The world is still an unstable place. There are too many Saddam Husseins and North Koreas out there. Also, we lose lots of soldiers because of the deployments. From World War II until 1989, there were 11 deployments. But since 1989, there have been 33 deployments. And all we have to do as a Member, and I recommend to all of the Members of Congress to do this, they should go talk to some of the military posts and bases in their district and find out how the recruitment is doing and the reenlistment is doing. They are losing lots of good soldiers.”